Ben Stokes is still at least a month away from recovering from the broken wrist suffered after punching a locker following his dismissal in the final game of England's Caribbean tour last month, and on Thursday he revealed rather sheepishly that the offending item of dressing-room furniture was adorned with a picture of himself. England players shot themselves in the foot several times over the winter, but this is surely the first time one has ever punched themselves in the face.

In the 1980s and 1990s it was entirely normal for a young player to endure a trying first England tour – defeat would follow defeat, plots would be lost, axes would swing, and the youngster in question would return home at the end of the trip chastened by the experience and left to be buffeted by the tumultuous winds of the fallout.

These days it is a much rarer occurrence – lest we forget the Ashes whitewash was England's first defeat in a five-Test series since 2008-09 and by some distance the most traumatic tour since at least 2006-07 – and while the results were retro, for Stokes there were positives aplenty. The battle with an Antiguan locker, however, was not one of them. Nor was it a new experience – as a younger man playing club cricket he once broke a bone after punching a fire door. There is, though, a steely determination to make the best of a brutal winter.

"It was a failure on a personal level," he says. "I've got a lot of passion about what I do and when things don't go well ... unfortunately on that occasion the passion I have for the game came out in a way that I regret.

"Looking back it's obviously something I regret doing and hopefully in the future if I get to that point again hopefully I can deal with it in a way where I don't break a wrist.

"I don't want to stop [that passion] on the field, I hope to never again show the sort of emotion off the field that results in an injury as silly as this one. But I definitely won't lose that edge I have on the field. It's just a matter of handling it a bit more maturely. I don't think punching lockers is the way forward for anyone. There's only going to be one winner there."

The physical recovery is apparently on-schedule, with an appointment with a specialist in the middle of next month set to clarify when exactly Stokes can return to the fray, and mentally things are on the mend too. Sessions with the England sports psychologist have been helpful.

The enforced rest may not have been desired – "It's been frustrating more than anything. I won't look back on it thinking: 'I'm glad I had that break.' It has been a long winter, but I'd rather be out there playing cricket than sat at home twiddling my thumbs" – but at least it has allowed space to analyse exactly what can be taken from the dismal Ashes tour.

Stokes was one of the few bright spots for England in Australia. His six for 99 in the first innings at Sydney gave the tourists brief hope of avoiding a 5-0 scoreline and served notice of his talent as a potential third seamer in the XI, but the 120 he scored in the losing effort in Perth most neatly encapsulated his series – personal achievement in a failing collective.

"[The Perth century] was weird because I couldn't really express my emotions as well as I could've done, due to the game situation," he says. "Being out there, as a 22-year-old, it opens your eyes up to the highest level of the sport. It can only do good things. It didn't go great team-wise, but I'd rather learn the hard way than walk into games thinking it's a piece of piss."

Though the coachless Test team is in an understandable state of flux, a fully fit Stokes somewhere in the middle-to-lower order should be a certainty. In the one-day side his role is less clear – he has already batted at No3, No5, No6, No7 and No8 in 14 ODI innings. Though a jack-of-all-trades gig does not trouble him too much, a spot towards the top of the scorecard is the aim.

"I've been up and down the order. I'm just happy to get a game and wherever I'm told to bat or told to bowl I'll do it," Stokes insists. "I want to be a high-order batter in the one-day stuff, to play some long innings rather than just go in and have a swipe."

Swipes off the agenda, then. On and off the pitch.

Ben Stokes was speaking in the buildup to the NatWest T20 Blast season, which starts on Friday 16 May. Buy tickets at www.ecb.co.uk/natwestt20blast